Providence, Prologue & Chapter One
Prologue:
He waits.
Waits for what he knows will come. For a change that has been in motion since the dawn of his creation, for a change that will alter the course of all living things. He waits for an evil growing even as this world enjoys its false tranquility, ignorant as its peace slips away.
It is almost time.
His paws pad softly, each step muffled on the mossy earth. His steady breaths form warm puffs of air as his eyes scan the dark shadows lurking under the canopy of trees.
Tonight the forest sleeps, but there’s uneasiness in its mood.
Weary from his journey, he sits, welcoming the quiet of night. He sniffs, drawing in the salty air. It swirls lazily, hovering just inches above the blanket of ferns.
The air is clean, but for how long?
He looks up. The new moon is barely discernible against the black sky and shimmering stars. Whispery clouds glide overhead as a cool wind gently encourages the branches in their never-ending ballet. His muscles ease with the rhythmic melody of waves rolling onto the rocky shore.
At the scampering of small feet, he turns. The forest creatures will not hide; they have come to know him, to trust he won’t hurt them. He is their protector, a protector of the earth and all its living things. And a protector of the peace for which they have foolishly become accustomed.
‘Soon,’he sighs.
Soon they will be free of their binds. And then they will come.
He closes his eyes, his heart growing heavy with worry.
‘No,’ he shakes his head.‘I must have faith.’
Soon he will welcome the new ones. Those who may be more powerful than any to have come before. But hope is fading. Can they do what those before them could not?
He stands, shaking the moisture off his damp fur. Lifting his head, he draws a deep breath, tasting his surroundings.
His eyes snap open, searching the darkness as menace seeps into the forest around him. A low, vibrating growl rolls from his chest.
In the dark trees a shadow shifts, slowly taking form. Then red eyes flash, meeting his angry glare.
His growl deepens.
Suddenly, a loud cry pierces the air as a burst of cold wind slams into him, causing him to sway.
He roars and digs his claws into the earth.
Thunder explodes in the sky above.
The forest wakes.
It is time.
He begins to run.
Chapter 1:
Life comes down to this, there’s always a choice. If Kenley Madigan had known what her week would bring, she might have chosen to just stay in bed.
Kenley heard the click of the alarm before a blare of music broke into the quiet of her room. She groaned and sank deeper into her perfect cocoon of warm blankets.
Mornings. Kenley hated mornings. It didn’t take long for her daily mantra of internal negotiations to begin.
‘Just one more snooze.’ She thought.
The price for this personal treachery would be high. But even with the guarantee of her brother’s teasing, she couldn’t persuade her body to get up. Kenley knew when she was finally forced out, the cold air was waiting to pounce.
With her will crumbling to pieces she rolled over and calculated which corners could be cut in her morning routine. There weren’t many left. Years of self-imposed time limitations meant she’d already reduced it to the bare minimum.
Kenley sighed and unwound her arm. After three tries she located the alarm. Feeling the familiar indention of her finger’s habitual presence, she pushed the snooze button.
Silence.
Her arm quickly retreated and pulled the covers over her head. Soon her consciousness wandered and thoughts of a dream, a dream that had plagued her every night for over a month, bubbled to the surface. Frankly, the whole thing bordered on ridiculous. Usually Kenley never remembered dreams, let alone one that relentlessly taunted her, stopping in the same place each time.
But as Kenley drifted back to sleep, she was jolted awake by the shouts of a habitually cheery announcer’s voice. She groaned again, pulling the covers higher.
“…last night’s storm took its toll on the Oregon Coast with trees down as far north as Newport. In other news, a logger has been reported missing. Damaged equipment along with animal tracks, possibly belonging to a black bear, have been spotted in the area. Authorities fear the man may be seriously injured and in need of medical attention. He is the sixth person reported missing in the central Coastal Mountains in the last five months. No bodies have been recovered. And now for your local weather…”
The voice of the weatherman, a person far too happy to relay the same information day after day, chimed in. “The high today will reach 49 degrees. Drizzle in the morning with the fog burning off by noon. The wind will pick up late this afternoon and expect another round of thunder showers to roll in late this evening. The weather is brought to you by…”
The noise transitioned to an advertisement for carpet or flooring. Kenley couldn’t tell. She was only listening out of obligation to give her brain a fighting chance of revival. Then something clicked.
‘Thunder?’ She thought. Rare to start, the Central Oregon Coast almost never had thunder in the winter.
But any curiosity of the weather was quickly replaced with the thought of getting out of bed. Kenley sighed and began coaxing her arm out from her covers. But as the door to her bedroom creaked, she gave up. Soft footsteps crossed her pale pink carpet and with a light click, the car advertisement shouting rock bottom prices, was hushed.
“Sorry,” Kenley mumbled from beneath the blanket.
“I know.” Bryn laughed and walked into the bathroom separating their adjoining rooms.
Every day it was the same, Kenley promised to be the first one into the shower, and Bryn, her seventeen year old sister and youngest of the triplets, gave up listening to her hit the snooze. Kenley wasn’t even sure Bryn set her own alarm. There wasn’t a point, sound had no trouble traveling through the thin walls of their aging Victorian home.
A few minutes later, Kenley heard the shower turn off. She took a deep breath knowing she could no longer delay the inevitable. But it took Bryn’s tapping foot to finally get her moving.
“Alright,” she grumbled. “I’m up.”
Apparently, she didn’t move fast enough. Bryn’s tapping ceased in an abrupt stomp. Kenley was shocked, she could practically feel Bryn’s glare boring a hole through her blankets.
“Geez Bryn,” she huffed and sat up, pulling the covers off her head.
But she was immediately confused, Bryn was nowhere in sight.
As the blankets fell from Kenley’s shoulders and the chill of the room swallowed her, she shivered. But her shiver wasn’t from the drafty air.
Her intuition flickered. Something wasn’t right.
She listened, but other than the rock music wafting in from Bryn’s room, the house seemed uncharacteristically void of activity. Kenley grabbed the corner of her blanket, but paused. The simple movement made her oddly imbalanced. Slowly, she tilted her head; the room shifted with her. She swallowed and closed her eyes, trying to regain a sense of stability. A strange pressure was building around her; the air compressed her chest and an uncomfortable ringing filled her ears. She opened her eyes.
Something was definitely wrong.
Tentatively, Kenley searched her room. Nothing appeared out of place in its controlled chaos. Pushing the covers aside, she slid off the bed and stood. She took one step then froze. Something was hissing, and whatever it was, it wasn’t happy.
Quickly she looked to the corner of her room. But the hissing wasn’t the familiar sound of air escaping her old, metal radiator. She scanned her floor seeing nothing other than piles of dirty clothes. Feeling dizzy, she closed her eyes. Hoping to relieve the pressure tightening around her skull, she placed her fingers on her temples and squeezed. After a moment, the hissing stopped. But in that second of silence, Kenley realized she was no longer alone.
Lowering her hands, she opened her eyes again. As she turned, something crashed against her window, shaking it violently and sending a loud crack ricocheting off the walls.
She yelped and whipped around half-expecting shattered glass would cover her floor. The window was intact, but what now filled its frame sent terror rippling through her. There, blocking the light, was the silhouette of something enormous. And staring at her through a bent blind was a pair of dark, angry eyes.
Her mouth dropped.
As if in response, an enraged shriek pierced the air and a loud clap of thunder exploded outside.
Gasping, Kenley scrambled backward and caught her foot on a discarded blanket. Losing her balance, she tumbled onto the bed, smacking her head against the wall. Ignoring the stab of pain, she bolted upright and look towards the window.
Shock instantly replaced fear. The frame was completely empty. Frantically, she searched the room. But she was alone.
For a second she simply waited, trying to catch her breath as her heart pounded in her chest. Eventually the ringing in her ears subsided, the heavy atmospheric pressure faded and the vice around her head loosened.
As she stared at the window, wary to move, the bustle of morning slowly returned. She heard Trigg’s heavy footsteps walking down the stairs and Bryn’s favorite band thumping from her room. Before standing, Kenley took a moment to compose herself, wanting to make sure her knees wouldn’t collapse. After another minute passed with no indication her visitor would return, she took a deep breath and coaxed her body to move. Cautiously, she slid off the bed and crept to the window. With her hand trembling, she separated the blinds and peeked out.
The sky had the dull glow of a winter morning, the sun too weak to break through the patchwork of light and dark gray clouds. A light rain pattered against the warped glass.
From her second floor room she saw the white caps of the ocean waves and the graceful swaying of the evergreen trees, a familiar sign of the near-constant wind. On the expansive lawn, stretching from her home to the cliff’s edge, a few dozen seagulls milled around, picking at their feathers or nibbling on morsels discovered in the grass. In a unified mass, they took flight creating a long shadow on the ground.
Kenley took another breath and let the blinds snap back into place. As she turned, she reached up and gently touched the back of her head. The spot where it had hit the wall was tender.
“Seriously,” she grumbled. “I’m going crazy.”
She lowered her hand and absently grabbed the faded denim skirt lying on her cluttered desk. She then opened her closet and pulled out a red sweater and her favorite pair of black, knee-high boots. On her way to the bathroom, she carelessly tossed them onto her unmade bed.
“Morning.” Bryn smiled as Kenley walked in.
Bryn was already dressed in a blue v-neck layered over a white t-shirt. Her large brown belt hung loosely around her tiny waist and her fitted jeans were tucked into clunky suede boots.
“Morn’,” Kenley grumbled and threw her towel on the counter. “You didn’t just...” Kenley paused, wondering how to describe what had just happened.
“Uh, Kenley?” Bryn asked when Kenley didn’t continue. “You okay? Looks like you’ve just seen a ghost.”
“Yeah, I’m fine.” Kenley said. “So you didn’t just hear anything weird?”
“Like what?” Bryn finished brushing her hair.
“Never mind,” Kenley turned, “was probably just thunder.” She reached up and wiped the tangled mess of hair from her face, then grabbed her toothbrush.
“It’s raining?” Bryn set her brush on the counter. After checking herself in the mirror one last time, she turned to Kenley. “I’m going down to head Trigg off for you.”
“Yeah, good luck with that.” Kenley said through a foamy mouth. Yesterday, after Kenley’s desperate call, having jogged much further than she realized, Trigg’s teasing had been merciless. She had no hope it wouldn’t resume this morning, apparently Bryn didn’t either.
Bryn laughed.”I think you need more luck than I do.” She smiled warmly, it reminded Kenley of her father.
Bryn had gotten the best of both their parents. She was breathtakingly beautiful without a smidge of makeup and her long, auburn hair always dried perfectly straight with no hint of frizz. Where Kenley’s round face had always been pale, Bryn’s heart-shaped one had an assortment of perfectly placed freckles on her cheeks and nose. If she’d ever gotten a pimple, CNN would have made it breaking news and with her olive-toned skin, tanning was wholly unnecessary, even in winter.
“So Trigg and I were thinking of hitting that new trail Murphy mentioned.” Bryn said as she tidied the counter. Out of the three of them, Bryn was the only one able to keep her room neat and once a week she reached her limit with Kenley, picking up their bathroom too. “You in?”
Kenley didn’t know why Bryn bothered to ask, it was rightfully expected she’d go. But before she could answer, she noticed the hint of faint circles under Bryn’s eyes.
“Hello,” Bryn said slowly, tilting her head, “you in there?”
“Oh, sorry.” Kenley blinked. “Yeah, I’ll go. Hey, are you tired?”
“No, why?” Bryn asked, somewhat taken aback.
“Nothing,” Kenley shrugged. “See you downstairs in twenty minutes.”
As Bryn passed the threshold into her room, she glanced over her shoulder, “Sorry babe, you’re down to seventeen.”
“Great,” Kenley huffed and hopped into the shower.
After completing the necessary steps, she quickly dried off and proceeded through her daily routine. She applied a tiny amount of make-up, not enough to make the cosmetic companies excited, then flipped her head upside down and squeezed as much moisture out of her long, blonde hair as possible. Grabbing Bryn’s brush, she combed her wavy curls into a loose ponytail.
Once dressed, she examined herself. Though it was sometimes hard living with a sister who was borderline-angelic, and a brother who was a walking Abercrombie and Fitch poster, both without trying, she was satisfied with the results. At the least, she no longer looked as tired as she felt. Grabbing her overflowing book bag, she walked out of her room.
As she made her way down the hall, she glanced at the mismatched photos dating to when her great-grandparents emigrated from Ireland. When she neared the top of the stairs, she stopped at a picture of her, Trigg, and Bryn. It had been taken after last year’s homecoming game. Trigg, the middle triplet and only male in the house, was completely covered in mud. His arm hung over Kenley’s shoulder, but Bryn, who was taller, casually leaned away. If Kenley’s had seen Trigg’s crooked grin then, she would’ve known he was up to something. A second after the picture was taken he smeared mud in both of their faces.
Kenley then glanced at the picture of her parents, Egan and Tara Madigan and couldn’t help feeling a familiar pang of jealously. She knew it was petty, but it had always bothered her that with her blonde hair and blue eyes, between the siblings, she looked the least like her parents. She’d inherited only one thing from her strikingly beautiful mother; her eyes flashed bright green when she was irritated or upset.
Kenley turned, but before she took the first step down the stairs something caught her eye. She looked up to see the last picture taken of her immediate family together. More than 16 years ago, in the fall after their first birthday, her parents and Aunt Slaney disappeared while hiking. Kenley, Bryn and Trigg had lived with their grandmother, Maella, ever since.
Although she had looked at this particular photo a thousand times, she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was different. Dropping her bag, she took a step forward and inspected the three children in the triple stroller. Even then, there were more differences than similarities between them. They had only one trait in common. Each had a small, circular birthmark on the inside of their right wrist. It was so faint people didn’t even realize it was there.
Kenley raised her hand and touched the glass. As she lightly traced her father’s face, she saw something she’d never seen before. Though he smiled, his dark brown eyes were full of sorrow. But that wasn’t the only thing. The picture suddenly seemed sharply focused, the occupants unnaturally crisp. Squinting, she stepped closer.
“Kenley?” Gran yelled, Kenley jumped. “Get a move on, your late.”
“Coming,” she hollered.
Picking up her bag, she ran down the stairs.